There are thousands of web hosting service providers in the marketplace today. With so many choices, it can be very difficult and almost impossible to determine which hosting company can provide you with the best service that you expect for your website without paying a significant amount of money. Here are some tips that can help you find a reputable and affordable website hosting provider.

Pricing

The cost of web hosting services starts from $5 per month all the way up to several hundred dollars per month, depending on the type of web hosting you need. Some even offer great deals such as paying as little as $1.99 if you pay an entire year in advance.

Although affordable website hosting companies are good for small blogs or websites, you should avoid free or cheap web hosting services if you are building a large e-commerce site, which often needs to have a shopping cart or other e-commerce services. Keep in mind that free or cheap web hosting services are usually attractive due to cheap prices, but they jam-pack their servers with so many websites that you will sometimes experience a higher downtime than if you pay to have your website hosted on a dedicated server.

A reasonably-priced web hosting service is often based on Linux since it’s more affordable as compared to Windows and open source development tools such as PHP, MySQL and Telnet service. Since those languages and databases can be installed for free, the web hosting company tends to use them for its website. On the other hand, a Windows-based web hosting company is proprietary so it will be more expensive as compared to Linux.

Look at the different options

When surfing around and looking for different options for web hosting, you might have run into the different kinds of web hosting, such as Shared, Virtual Private Server (VPS) and Dedicated Web Hosting. The prices between these types doubles and triples, just evaluate their features before you make your decision. A Shared server is ideal for start-ups. A VPS server is for websites that drive more than a thousand of visitors per day. If your website is driving massive amounts of unique visitors per day, you should upgrade to a Dedicated Server. A Dedicated Server is a great option for websites that are getting massive amounts of visitors and have a lot of dynamic features.

Tools for setting up your site

If you do not have a website yet, make sure you choose an affordable website hosting company that offers a wide range of website building tools, such as WordPress, an easy to use website builder, and a shopping cart program. Many of the reputable web hosting companies today will also provide you with malware scanning, virus scanning, a premium DNS, and even an SSL certificate to satisfy your clients.

Some other popular features that many website hosting companies are offering nowadays involve around ad credits for Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Bing. By building your website with a range of free advertising credit, you can immediately get your site listed on the search engines, which will help drive more traffic and hopefully more sales.

Customer service

Customer service is important as well. When your website crashes, do you want a web hosting company that you can pick up a phone and talk live with or a hosting company that you have to send an email to and wait a few days for a reply? Of course you will choose the first one. When finding the best customer service in a website hosting company, don’t just rely on the “testimonials” on their web page. Try to visit forums and reputable sites such as NCM Online and read their reviews and comments. You should also check the company’s web page and make sure that they offer 24/7 customer support via telephone or live chat.

When you are building a website for your own personal use, you will want an affordable website hosting provider that you can depend on. That being said, finding a reliable and affordable website hosting isn’t easy because sometimes you will find one that is affordable but it is not as reliable as you wanted to be.